But compared to having a ROUTINE, having things like the usual Friday night drinks at the local pub. Knowing where you’ll be next week. Being able to plan, to prepare things. To be able to buy fresh food knowing you’ll be home before the use-by date…

But then, there are things you might have forego for all that…

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Of much more interest is the story of the maid in Hong Kong who laced her menstrual blood into her employers’ vegetables in order to smooth things over with them or something. OK, hope you’d finished eating (or maybe not) before you read that…

One of the girls in the office (there is only one actually) said that she’d also heard of maids putting their urine into the house drinks in order to make the bosses like them more.

My strategy, if for some unfathomable reason I wanted to people to like me, would have been pushing about 180 degrees to these ones. My response to someone doing that to me would also be the opposite to what was intended!

“I want you like me, so drink my urinary output or my monthly decidual effluvium…” – I think not! You’re so out of here!!

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BTW, I did mention I am back on Cymbalta, didn’t I? No?

First thing, the prostate has given up the ghost plus I feel both manic and dopey all the time. Oh dear. Second thing, the toes are not so painful.

Yes, after three months, the positive effects of those SNRIs on my chronic foot pain (sorry to keep going on about these feet of mine, but people do ask) had been gradually diminishing and my feet were playing up like the bejesus, pretty much back to what they were in the middle of last year.

Particularly annoying were the electric pains shooting into my toes, that was coming back with a depressingly persistent energy. As soon as I took the Cymbalta though, in Boracay, the shooting pains stopped. There was still some sensitivity to any cold, moving air (like, from the always-on air-con) but it really works so much better than just the Lyrica and Tramadol.

But obviously, like having an expat lifestyle, there are drawbacks just are there are benefits. Prostatism, shrinking penis, even lower libido, drowsiness, a strange hollow sensation (due to my adrenaline being up), increased sweating (on my head in partic.), general clumsiness, even greater word-loss during conversations…

But the drawbacks, you ask? Hahaha. The ONE benefit: my feet don’t hurt as much. The ball of the foot ache and weight-bearing pain is still there, but the toes are 80% better.

Chronic pain, man, it fucks you up. Why? Because it forces you to keep thinking about the painful area, it makes you continually aware of it. That is what pain’s role is, to highlight things for you. There were only a few times in the last five years where I was able to have almost a whole day without thinking about my feet, without being acutely conscious of them, and that was in the few months following my course of Cymbalta at the end of last year.

I mean, you’re not really aware of your hands are you? Unless you want something done with them, or bang a hammer onto a thumb. They are not in the front of your awareness. Well, my feet are, or they have been.

I had a few days of escape there, and I want that release back, despite the inconveniences of this drug.